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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843190">collateral damage</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cancer/pseuds/Cancer'>Cancer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, canon?? what canon lmao, hand holding, mutual understanding, so sometime around the first series, they are children here, this is technically in the canon world though</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 21:16:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>856</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843190</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cancer/pseuds/Cancer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>That’s why he didn’t think it would work, maybe. That Sasuke would see the flower—small, a little sad, innocent and unassuming—and he would not only understand but go through with it. Because when there was a victim and a perpetrator there were parts of an equation you could get an answer to. When there was only collateral damage, it was just too much of one thing that nobody wanted.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>collateral damage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeyKnows/gifts">KeyKnows</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>following the zombie trope, this is me writing for naruto *insert here titanic meme of "it's been 84yrs"*<br/>ANYWAY. my friend (you fucker how dare) gave me a borusasu to read (because we're both horrible people) and i was like HOW DARE YOU GIMME SASUNARU FEELS WITH A BORUSASU as if the whole thing wasn't fucked up enough to begin with. so then i was like, you know what, i need to write some sasunaru now wtf. and here it is. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY.<br/>i was gonna write something happy and funny, i said to myself, but no, NOPE, this is what we get.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>All things considered, Naruto didn’t think it would actually work. Usually things like that didn’t work for him, people assuming he meant a prank or a joke, or just didn’t care enough to take him seriously. It was Sasuke, though, so maybe that was why.</p><p>He wouldn’t mean a prank, not about that. He made less jokes than people related him to, and they would know if they ever paid attention. But it was him, not them, who was in the shadows. It was him who sat at the edges of town and <em>looked</em>, wishing and hoping and imagining and expecting to remember something that didn’t exist in his mind to begin with. For a moment when people hadn’t hated him for something he didn’t know.</p><p>Now that he knew, it didn’t really make much more sense. He didn’t put the beast inside himself, he didn’t try to kill his parents, the whole village. Sometimes, when it got real dark and lonely, he let himself drift into horrible thoughts.</p><p>Maybe he would have. If given the opportunity he would destroy the whole world to get his parents back. He would destroy the hate to get some of the love people liked to rub on his face. He would destroy everyone who was passive enough to say they cared about him but not do anything about his suffering even though they knew about it.</p><p>He didn’t, though. At the end of the day it made as much sense as people hating him for something he hadn’t done.</p><p>That was the difference between them, he thought. The difference between him and Sasuke. Sasuke was a victim. The victim of something nobody wanted to see coming despite the signs. Naruto was a perpetrator.</p><p>If someone had asked him when he wasn’t being purposely obtuse, he would say that maybe there was no victim or perpetrator at all. They were both just collateral damage.</p><p>That’s why he didn’t think it would work, maybe. That Sasuke would see the flower—small, a little sad, innocent and unassuming—and he would not only understand but go through with it. Because when there was a victim and a perpetrator there were parts of an equation you could get an answer to. When there was only collateral damage, it was just too much of one thing that nobody wanted.</p><p>But maybe Naruto was wrong. Maybe that was exactly why Sasuke showed up.</p><p>There was a simple stone built on the edge of the cemetery. Big, bigger than any of the other common stones around, and yet the names barely fitted, and now that he was old enough, Sasuke wondered where would his name go, once he was dead, if they’re going to keep him apart from his family even when there was nothing left of him.</p><p>Somedays he wondered where would his brother’s name go. If anyone would even remember him at all.</p><p>Now that he was old enough, he wondered where the bodies went. Who cleaned them up? Who took him away from the field of corpses.</p><p>The flower is small and a little sad, clearly from someone who has nothing to give and yet found a way to give him something.</p><p>Sasuke doesn’t forget the date. Doesn’t think he ever could. For everyone else it’s just a day that happened and not a constant reminder. Nobody else died that day. Sometimes, standing by the stone, he wonders if anyone outside his own clan ever actually loved them, or if it’s just too much tragedy to even bother.</p><p>Naruto doesn’t have a stone at all. Now that he knows who to look for, he knows there’s a giant face on the side of the mountain that everyone looks to when they feel like remembering, but there’s no stone for him.</p><p>Yet, he gave Sasuke a flower because at least he knows a name and has a stone, and Naruto thinks it’s worthwhile.</p><p>When Sasuke walks up to him, Naruto smiles, a little thing that he only uses when they’re alone in silence and that nobody else even knows exists. There is already a flower on the soil by the biggest stone with the many names that people don’t bother to visit. He would like to bring more but the truth is he stole these two from a garden, and the old woman living in the house chased him down the block with a broom, screaming about delinquents before realizing who he was and hastily retreating back to her house.</p><p>Sasuke puts the flower on the ground by the other one and doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t have to. Naruto won’t say he’s sorry. Naruto holds his hand up and Sasuke takes it; it’s a little sweaty from carrying the flower all the way down but they don’t let go.</p><p>They <em>are</em> collateral damage, Naruto thinks. The kind of thing people like to bury and forget about. Or maybe they are more like weeds, he thinks. The kind of thing that people like to bury and wish didn’t exist and try to kill again and again and yet it grows, steady and unstoppable.</p>
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